The story of a quaint and charming railway station

Because of the beautiful old train station......
Saks Fifth Avenue
Quotehd.com
This is going to be an interesting post, at least that is how I feel as I start stringing in the words to give the post a good structure and content. The new year,at our end has started with a little bit of travel . And while we visited places on work coupled with pleasure, we realised how beautiful a country we live in. For the longest of time, I had been saving up photographs of the pretty Swiss countryside from several travel magazines. Switzerland is a place I have set my heart on. Visiting our very own Ooty and more recently parts of Himachal Pradesh, made me take note of our desi Swiss countryside.
We follow a strange philosophy while travelling; for us, it isn't the common, the more popular tourist destinations and spots. We prefer to chalk out our own list of places to visit. We have been following this for quite sometime now and our recent trip was no exception. Setting up base in the lesser known Kimughat, though the hotel read Kasauli, we decided to travel to not so well- known places like Barod and Solan rather than Shimla as probably most tourists would've done. And we were not disappointed with our choice ! The picturesque spots travelled along with us; they were at every nook and corner, the most mediocre looking dhabas served us steaming cups of masala chai along with some magnificent view of the snow clad mountains. Being mountain lovers, all along, we never missed an opportunity to travel to the mountains whenever possible. It is at such times I felt the need to be really rich money-wise :-))))))))))......so we could travel without having to think much! Thanks to these trips, we have learnt to discern the differences in the mountains, the vegetation, flora and fauna, the surroundings and much more. And that, the Himalayas are mighty.
Our itinerary did undergo some change as more snowfall was expected in the region. We finally zeroed down on Barog and Solan, Barog, as we wanted to see the quaint and pretty railway station. My post here is all about this charming little railway station. This little place serves as a stopover for refreshment between Kalka and Shimla and vice-versa. This train line has a speciality; it features in the list of the prestigious Unesco World Heritage. As a child I had heard about this as 'the toy train'...well, I would still call it a toy train ride as the trains looks pretty different from the regular ones. These trains having pretty names like Himalayan Queen ( one of the few trains running on this route) have about six to seven coaches. And to me, they looked like carriages straight out of Enid Blyton's Malory Towers!

The red roofed main building of the station looked very pretty!

There is an interesting story associated with Barog. It is the story of a Britisher,  Colonel Barog. He was in charge of constructing this tunnel that you see in the photograph. The entire stretch between Kalka and Shimla initially had about 107 tunnels. Out of this, 102 are operational at the moment. Barog tunnel is the longest of all these tunnels. It is also a straight tunnel.We could actually see light at the other end of the tunnel! Well, going back to the story of Colonel Barog, the British engineer, was fined as he made some errors while constructing this tunnel. This made him depressed and finally led to his suicide. The small town gets its name from the colonel. 

Going down to the station was quite a trek!

The tea stall where we had some fresh masala chai..........

It was our luck that we met the station super of Barog who shared with us a lot of history of this place. He, very enthusiastically clicked our photographs with the train in the background. He even showed us the old station buildings. I have shared some very old photographs of how Barog looked during the British era. These are photographs from the internet, that the station super has lovingly framed and hung up in his cabin. The station is now just a stop over for refreshment as I mentioned earlier. We cannot embark or disembark from the train in this station unless we are staying in the retiring rooms there. One look at this place will be enough for anyone to understand why we cannot make use of this station like all other stations. But at the same time, there are the old heritage rooms, the retiring rooms to be precise,that are reserved by the travellers mostly during summers to spend the night and proceed to Shimla the next day. Interesting concept, isn't it? I would love to experience this uncommon lodging in a station someday!

As goods are being unloaded to prepare refreshments...............

Barog as it was during the British time.......

Barog during the British era.........

The other end of the station...........

As the train goes into the tunnel..........

Did I not mention about the retiring rooms? The interesting concept of spending time in a station........

view of the station......

The old fireplace!
This was Barog through our lens and eyes. We loved what we saw; hope you ,too, enjoyed the post.